Exodus 14

¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, ² “Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea. ³ For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, ‘They are wandering in the land; the wilderness has shut them in.’ ⁴ And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.” And they did so. ⁵ When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” ⁶ So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him, ⁷ and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. ⁸ And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. ⁹ The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon. ¹⁰ When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. ¹¹ They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” ¹³ And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. ¹⁴ The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” ¹⁵ The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. ¹⁶ Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground. ¹⁷ And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. ¹⁸ And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.” ¹⁹ Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, ²⁰ coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night. ²¹ Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. ²² And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. ²³ The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. ²⁴ And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, ²⁵ clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.” ²⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.” ²⁷ So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. ²⁸ The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. ²⁹ But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. ³⁰ Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. ³¹ Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

Now we come to the grand moment, the parting of the Red Sea. It is difficult to overestimate the significance of this stunning demonstration of divine power. A.W. Pink referred to Israel’s passage through the Red Sea as “one of the most remarkable miracles recorded in the O.T., certainly the most remarkable miracle in the history of Israel.” He then went on to say this:

From this point onwards, whenever the servants of God would remind the people of the Lord’s power and greatness, reference is almost always made to what He wrought for them at the Red Sea…The miracle of the Red Sea occupies a similar place in the O.T. scriptures as the resurrection of the Lord Jesus does in the New; it is appealed to as a standard of measurement, as the supreme demonstration of God’s power…[1]

I do not believe that is an overstatement. On the contrary, it is likely the case that this miracle was indeed the grandest miracle of all until the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In terms of the Old Testament and Israel’s history, this is the great saving act that preserved them as a people and rescued them from destruction. In that sense, this miracle pointed forward to the saving work of Christ on the cross and through the empty tomb.

The deliverance of Israel through the Red Sea was a missionary proclamation of God’s name for His glory.

It is fascinating to observe the Lord’s stated purpose for bringing Israel through the Red Sea. Listen carefully.

¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, ² “Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of          Baal-zephon; you shall encamp facing it, by the sea. ³ For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, ‘They are wandering in the land; the wilderness has shut them in.’ ⁴ And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.” And they did so. ⁵ When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” ⁶ So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him, ⁷ and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. ⁸ And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. ⁹ The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon.

What did God set out to accomplish through this miracle? We might expect the first thing to be, “the salvation of Israel.” And, of course, that is true from a certain perspective. But notice what God Himself says: “…and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.”

This is what I mean by calling this an act of missionary proclamation. In delivering Israel through the Red Sea, God gets the glory that Pharaoh and his people think is his and the power and might of God becomes known to the Egyptians at large.

Let us never forget this: the salvation of God’s people is a hallelujah chorus to God’s own glorious name. All of human history is a struggle (on man’s part) to see who will get glory. But God alone gets the glory! Paul says the same about the Lord Jesus in Philippians 2.

⁹ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, ¹⁰ so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, ¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

It is not just that God’s people get saved. It is also that God Himself gets glory!

Pharaoh, upon realizing what he had done, and upon realizing that the Jews were exposed and vulnerable out in the open, determined to attack and destroy them.

The theology of the Egyptians likely contributed to some extent to Pharaoh’s desire to pursue and destroy the Israelites. Douglas Stuart has reminded us that “the gods and goddesses that controlled the world were arbitrary and capricious, quick to change their actions and attitudes, constantly vying with one another for power, not omnipresent but manifesting themselves at given locations and then leaving those locations unpredictably.” As a result, Stuart suggests that “it would be natural for Pharaoh to think that he, Yahweh, after having expended great effort to demonstrate his power to the Egyptians, might now no longer be directly involved in helping the Israelites.”[2]

Perhaps Pharaoh did project his faulty understanding of the gods onto the Yahweh God, the one true God, and perhaps this faulty understanding contributed to his ultimately disastrous decision. Regardless, Moses provides us with the view of the situation from God’s perspective in verse 4: “And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them.” Many people find this troubling. However, it is only troubling if one operates from the assumption that Pharaoh was essentially good, was desiring to do rightly, and was hardened against his own will. Despite copious evidence against such an idea, there is also the fact that the text speaks of Pharaoh’s mind being changed before God hardened his heart. Note the terminology of verses 5 and 8.

⁵ When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?”

⁸ And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly.

In a certain sense, then, God simply amplified and quickened what Pharaoh already intended to do in the darkness of his own mind and heart. Terence Fretheim has said it well:

Before God proceeds with the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart (v 8), Pharaoh is pictured as having already changed his mind (=heart)…God’s hardening activity does not occur in a vacuum; it is not contrary to Pharaoh’s (or the Egyptians’, 14:17) own general will about the matter. God intensifies a well-ingrained proclivity…In effect, God uses existent human stubbornness against itself by closing down available options.[3]

God works to deliver His people and to destroy the Egyptian army, and He does so for His own glory. Philip Ryken notes that “it is ironic that the Egyptians were defeated at daybreak because that is when their sun god [Ra] was supposedly rising in the east.”[4] Thus, this entire account teems with evidences of the supremacy of Yahweh God, the God above all other gods.

The deliverance of Israel through the Red Sea was an occasion for growth and deepening faith for God’s people.

For the Egyptians, this was a painful opportunity for growth. Through it, they came to see who the true God really is. But it was also a frightening occasion for growth for the Jews as well. We can see this in their initial difficulty in trusting that God had brought them forth through the leadership of Moses and that God was going to deliver them and save them.

¹⁰ When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. ¹¹ They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” ¹³ And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. ¹⁴ The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” ¹⁵ The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. ¹⁶ Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground. ¹⁷ And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. ¹⁸ And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”

Assuming certain death, the Israelites cry out to the Lord and against Moses. They did so because they “lifted their eyes,” but not nearly high enough. They lifted them high enough to see Pharaoh and his army bearing down but not high enough to see the Lord God enthroned on high, faithful and true to His word and desirous to save His people. They saw the challenge but not the Victor. They saw the problem, but not the solution. They saw the might of man but not the might of the Lord God.

We can sympathize with Israel, for we undoubtedly do the same, do we not? A.W. Pink writes of our text:

This was a sore trial of faith, and sadly did Israel fail in the hour of testing. Alas! That this should so often be the case with us. After all God had done on their behalf in Egypt, they surely had good reason to trust in Him now. After such wondrous displays of Divine power, and after their own gracious deliverance from the Angel of Death, their present fear and despair were inexcusable. But how like ourselves! Our memories are so short. No matter how many times the Lord has delivered us in the past, no matter how signally His power has been exerted on our behalf, when some new trial comes upon us we forget God’s previous interventions, and are swallowed up by the greatness of our present emergency.[5]

Yes, our memories are short indeed! So God speaks to Israelites through Moses. His command? “¹³…Fear not, stand firm…see the salvation of the Lord…¹⁴…be silent.”

This is not what they wanted to hear! The army of mighty Egypt was coming down upon them and God told them to stand still. This was hard for them. It is also hard for us. We are a nation of fixers. Being still is not in our DNA. Especially when faced with a problem, we think we must solve the problem. We must do something. But in the truly great challenges of life, there is usually nothing to do at all. I am talking about those devastating moments when, if God does not show up, we are all goners. This is the situation in which Israel found itself on the shore of the Dead Sea. In your own ways, some of you know this feeling. You are facing something terrible, overpowering, seemingly invincible, and something against which you can literally do nothing.

Could it be that God is telling you, too, to stand still? Charles Spurgeon commented on this passage in this way to his London congregation:

I dare say you will think it a very easy thing to stand still, but it is one of the postures which a Christian soldier learns not without years of teaching. I find that marching and quick marching are much easier to God’s warriors than standing still. It is, perhaps, the first thing we learn in the drill of human armies, but it is one of the most difficult to learn under the Captain of our salvation The apostle seems to hint at this difficulty when he says, “Stand fast, and having done all still stand.” To stand at ease in the midst of tribulation, shows a veteran spirit, long experience, and much grace.[6]

May God give us the grace to stand still!

God miraculously delivered His people in a stunning display of power.

And then, God does what only God can do. He stops the Egyptian army, delivers His people through the Red Sea, then destroys the Egyptian army, and He does so in the most dramatic fashion.

¹⁹ Then the angel of God who was going before the host of Israel moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them, ²⁰ coming between the host of Egypt and the host of Israel. And there was the cloud and the darkness. And it lit up the night without one coming near the other all night. ²¹ Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. ²² And the people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. ²³ The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. ²⁴ And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, ²⁵ clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.” ²⁶ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.” ²⁷ So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. ²⁸ The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. ²⁹ But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. ³⁰ Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. ³¹ Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

God stops the Egyptians through the pillar of cloud and fire during the night. It is not exactly clear what this looked like, though the imagery is terrifying. The Egyptians were stopped before this daunting display of divine power. Behind the wall of cloud and fire, however, an even greater miracle was taking place: God divided the waters of the Red Sea and led the children of Israel through the midst of it on dry ground. He did so by having a strong wind blow all night, separating the waters. So He used natural means, but in a miraculous way, as only God can do. He made a road for His people where a road had never been before.

Here is the great miracle of the exodus! Israel passes through the Red Sea unscathed, protected, delivered, saved, and whole. It is impossible for us to imagine this scene with adequate imagery and detail. What a grand and glorious and shocking and terrifying and beautiful miracle! What must it have felt like to pass through the walls of the sea on dry land.

Then Egypt, seeing their chance, drove forward after them. Many early Jewish commentators fancifully hypothesized that “God made the Israelites appear as mares to the Egyptian stallions, driving the latter wild with excitement at the presence or scent of an estrual mare.”[7] It was not, however, the lust of the horses, but the hatred of Pharaoh that drove them forward. So they surged forward, and, in another amazing display of power, God, seeing that His children were free on the other side, caused the watery walls to collapse back inward, crushing and destroying and drowning the forces of Egypt.

Church, behold the power of our great God! He is the overcomer of enemies, the destroyer of armies, the crusher of the powers, and the humbler of Kings! And this God is your God if you have trusted in Jesus Christ. This same God. He has not changed for even a moment.

There is something beautiful in the language of Israel passing through the Red Sea on dry ground. Victor Hamilton points out that “the Hebrew word for ‘dry ground’ in v. 21 is ḥārābâ, but the word for ‘dry ground’ in v. 22 (and in 14: 16, 29; 15: 19) is yabbāšâ. The latter is the one used in the creation story in Gen. 1: 9– 10.”[8] It is used in the creation story, in the flood story, and here. Moresoe, remember the first words of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”

So in the beginning, the Spirit of God hovers over the deep and brings forth dry ground that divides the deep. Thus, He creates. And He does so again in the flood account, as we read in Genesis 8:

² The fountains of the deep and the windows of the heavens were closed, the rain from the heavens was restrained, ³ and the waters receded from the earth continually. At the end of 150 days the waters had abated, ⁴ and in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. ⁵ And the waters continued to abate until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were seen.

And He does so here, in our account of His deliverance of Israel from the Red Sea. Each is an act of creation, viewed properly. In Genesis, the early emerges as God creates the world. In the flood the earth emerges from the deep as God gives humanity a new beginning, a new Genesis. At the Red Sea the earth emerges from the deep as God saves His people, giving them a new beginning, a new start, a new genesis, a life outside of Egypt. They are, as it were, born again to be the people of God as their old enemy is destroyed and as they themselves are delivered.

Our God has authority over the waters. He creates through exercising this authority. With this in mind, a scene from Mark 4 takes on even added poignancy.

³⁵ On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶ And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. ³⁷ And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. ³⁸ But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹ And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰ He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹ And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

That is the question, no? Who is this Jesus that can save His people from drowning, who has the authority to speak to the sea and it must obey, who brings His people safely through the waters?

Here is the grandest miracle of all, even grander than the deliverance of Israel through the Red Sea: the God of the Exodus has come to us in Christ. We now see His glory in Jesus, who is still in the business of saving us, of delivering us, of bringing us through the waters, and of seeing us safe to the other side.

Come to Jesus, the delivering, saving King.

 

[1] Arthur W. Pink, Gleanings in Exodus. (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 1981), p.107.

[2] Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus. The New American Commentary. Vol 2. Gen. Ed., E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2006), p.330.

[3] Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus. Interpretation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p.155

[4] Philip Graham Ryken, Exodus. Preaching the Word (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), p.396.

[5] Arthur W. Pink, p.108.

[6] Philip Graham Ryken, p.388.

[7] Hamilton, Victor P., Kindle Locations 7303-7307.

[8] Hamilton, Victor P. (2011-11-01). Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary (Kindle Locations 7109-7111). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.